


Bajur

by hauntedjaeger (saellys)



Series: Loyalties [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Din POV, Gen, Mandalorian Culture, Missing Scene, Relationship Study, Sensory Overload, Vignette, parenting, submitting to the mortifying ordeal of being known, the creed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:07:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22790728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/hauntedjaeger
Summary: “Mama said you and Cara would teach me,” she says again, “but she’s the one who knows how to forage. And how to stay hidden in the woods. Those are good skills.”“You’re right,” Din says. More than she knows. Survival is strength, is the entire purpose of the six tenets. There are the skills that saved her village from raiders, and then there are the skills that continue to save it every day. “She has others, too. Military strategy.” A different sort than he learned--a different sort, even, than what Cara knows. “And how to inspire loyalty.”The girl looks up, brow furrowed. “What, like getting people to fall in love with me?”“Not exactly.”
Relationships: The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV) & Winta (Star Wars), mentioned Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/Omera (Star Wars)
Series: Loyalties [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1638454
Comments: 11
Kudos: 71





	Bajur

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Acts of Service](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22452490) by [hauntedjaeger (saellys)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/hauntedjaeger). 



> This fic is set just after chapter four of Acts of Service. 
> 
> "Bajur" is Mando'a for education, and the raising and nurturing of children.

Din has barely been engaged for twelve hours, and Winta already wants to cash in on the vow he hasn’t made yet. 

“So, what are you going to teach me?” she asks when he emerges from the house after breakfast. 

He stops on the porch and glances at the girl, then nods toward the woods. 

“Mama said you’d teach me to be a warrior,” Winta goes on over her shoulder as she walks. They pass Omera at the millstone, the foundling by her side, grinding up dried krill together. “Well, you and Cara. But I think Cara will mostly show me how to knock people down. She shoots good, but not better than you or Mama. So I thought you’d teach me other kinds of skills.” 

“Such as?” 

“How to fly a ship,” Winta says immediately. “How to use a flamethrower, and a grappling line. Explosives stuff. You know. Skills.” She checks over her shoulder to make sure he’s still there. He is. 

“When Cara shows you how to knock people down, you are not to use that on the other children just because they won’t give you a turn with a ball. Understand?” The _riduurok_ says to raise warriors, not bullies. 

“Do foundlings fight over things that stupid?” she says. 

He can see her logic on the horizon, her assertion that he shouldn’t hold her to a different standard. She’s almost right. “Foundlings all receive the same education. You’ll have an advantage.” 

“But you’re teaching the other kids things, too.” Astronavigation, galactic history, and what he recalls of the classical thinkers. Whatever he can come up with, on a given day, that their own families wouldn’t have. 

“I’m not marrying the other kids’ parents,” he replies. 

Winta giggles. “That would be a big wedding.” 

He stops at the edge of the forest and turns to face her. Nothing he teaches her will matter if she doesn’t first learn to listen. “What do you know about the woods?” 

“That it’s too dangerous to play there. But it’s less dangerous than it used to be. And Mama told me how to survive there, if it comes to that.” Din tilts his head. “In case the village is ever attacked again,” she explains. 

But not by bandits, else Omera would never tell her to flee to the woods. She must have started preparing Winta for the possibility of an aerial attack, from more bounty hunters or from the Imperial remnant, as soon as Din left with the kid. 

“Where did she tell you to go?” 

Winta grins, and dashes into the undergrowth. 

Din sighs and follows. Winta pulls ahead after half a kilometer, disappearing from his view, and if it weren’t for his thermal imaging he would walk right past her hiding place. The cave where she hunches is too small for an adult to stand inside. Bushes conceal most of the mouth. 

“This is a good spot,” he says, and there’s no mistaking the pride in Winta’s expression. 

They could make it better. Dig out a section of the rock, bury a salvaged escape pod with a sensor baffle. He leans against the stone by the entrance. “If you ever need to run here,” he says, “will you bring the little one?” 

“Of course,” she says solemnly. 

“Good. Now, what do you hear?” 

Winta looks at him, dubious. “It’s quiet.” Then her gaze sharpens. “Because the birds have gone. Except, not the hopper chicks. But hoppers don’t leave their nests unattended, so there’s still a bird nearby.” Din tilts his head. “Maybe two,” Winta amends. “The mate might have left, to watch from a different angle and dive bomb us if we get close. Also, there’s water dripping at the back of the cave. I could probably collect it.” 

“That’s very good.” 

Winta beams at him. “So what am I supposed to call you?” 

“What?” She changes direction faster than a snubfighter. Compared to the kid, who gets a thing in his head and never deviates until he’s got it in his little hand too, it’s dizzying. 

“When you marry Mama. I was thinking about calling Cara ‘Ma’. Unless they called moms something else on Alderaan. But ‘Da’ is for babies, and ‘Pa’...” She makes a face. “You know?” 

He wouldn’t care for “Pa”. He’s not _that_ old. 

The sound of his parents’ names has long since been drowned out by the clash of explosions and blaster fire over a faded tinnitus hum, so what he remembers is the shape of them when he spoke: Mama and Papa, accents on the second syllables. 

It... wouldn’t be right. Neither would “Dad,” or any variation on it. “Father” is clinical and inaccurate. 

He sighs. “Call me what you like.” 

“Just don’t call me late for supper,” Winta finishes in her best impression of Cara. She comes out of the cave and pokes around in the brush. “Mama said you and Cara would teach me,” she says again, “but she’s the one who knows how to forage. And how to stay hidden in the woods. Those are good skills.” 

“You’re right,” Din says. More than she knows. Survival is strength, is the entire purpose of the six tenets. There are the skills that saved her village from raiders, and then there are the skills that continue to save it every day. “She has others, too. Military strategy.” A different sort than he learned--a different sort, even, than what Cara knows. “And how to inspire loyalty.” 

The girl looks up, brow furrowed. “What, like getting people to fall in love with me?” 

“Not exactly.” 

Though there must be love in loyalty, for people who don’t swear a Creed that centers it in their identity. Cara speaks of the Princess of Alderaan with a devotion that transcends the fact that Alderaan no longer exists, or that the Rebellion the princess led became an institution that no longer deserved Cara’s loyalty. 

And there is loyalty in love, he has discovered. Because if Mand’alor marshalled the clans for war tomorrow… Din would go, yes, but not with the readiness of spirit he would have felt a year ago. 

“So like what?” Winta presses. 

He shrugs. “You’ll have to ask your mother.” 

Winta rolls her eyes, but goes back to foraging. “Have you been practicing taking the helmet off?” 

Din stares at her. 

“How long can you go?” she says. “We’ll be outside for a while at the wedding. I’ll bring sunbalm.” She straightens, a bunch of fern fronds in one fist, and the other hand holding a single wrinkly-capped fungus. “You practice. I’ll take these back home.” 

He pushes away from the rock wall, but Winta has a head start. “I’ll be fine!” she calls back. 

And he tells himself she will, that it’s daylight and she got here without incident. She knows the woods and can make it back to the village. 

He stands by the cave until she’s long out of sight and the thermal signature of her footprints has faded. He stands there until the hopper in the trees warbles a cautious note. Then he takes off his helmet. 

There is a slight breeze; his sensors picked up on it, but to feel it with his own skin is something else. Getting warm in the morning sun in his armor is one thing, and the unfiltered light on his face is another. 

They are making a compromise for him, no matter how much Cara and Omera insist otherwise. To ask Omera to raise her child according to the Creed, to ask Cara to have a hand in raising children at all… He owes them this much, his side of the bargain. A pitifully small thing, by comparison. If he can’t manage this, he doesn’t deserve them. 

He remembers to take a deep breath. The air smells like evergreens, like disturbed earth, like Omera’s hair. The hopper warbles again, and because it’s a living thing, Din turns to face the stone. He pulls off one glove so he can touch it, sun-warmed already, and rough in texture. 

The Graveyard of Alderaan has been a restricted zone since its creation. It would be suicide to attempt anything under the watch of the Flotilla. But perhaps if he asked first, perhaps if he explained. (A foreign concept, to ask permission, when all he’s ever done is take what he needed and tip well if the taking left a mess.) If he told the survivors he was marrying one of theirs, and could he please have three cubic centimeters of their dead planet? 

No. Someone would take it ill. If not the other survivors, then Cara. Why would she want to wear that, to see it every day? 

The birdcalls are starting to grate. If his helmet was on, he’d filter the frequency out. He inhales through his nose, shaky, jaw tight. 

He’s lucky this entire situation hasn’t frightened Cara off. Even before he admitted it to himself, and well before the Armorer confirmed it on Nevarro, he knew what he was to the foundling. Cara, who keeps scrupulous records of what she did and did not sign up for, who does not do the baby thing, entered a relationship with not one but _two_ single parents, and has never complained. Even when he told her the meaning of the _riduurok_ , her first, last, and only concern was for Omera. 

He’ll find something to give her and Omera both, that can settle the account. They deserve far more than the sight of him. 

He can’t take the drip of water at the back of the cave anymore, or the breeze on his too-warm, too-raw skin. Din jams the helmet back on and checks the time. 

Four minutes and thirty-six seconds. 

Won’t last half that long with them looking at him. Groaning, he leans his head forward against the stone. He tugs his glove back on and makes a fist, but all he would do here is bruise his knuckles. 

He breathes in again, easier now, and stands up straight. In the Fighting Corps when he missed his shot, no one judged. _Again_ , they said, until he did it right, and _again_ , until he couldn’t do it wrong. 

Winta, and his own child, will need a different approach--not because they’re weaker than he was, but because they’re not surrounded by the Fighting Corps and other foundlings with the same education. _That was better_ , he’ll say when they try, and fail. 

He sighs, turns back toward the village, and starts walking. 

It was better. The last time, he only made it three minutes. 

**Author's Note:**

> Cheers for reading! You can send me OT3 prompts on my Tumblr @hauntedfalcon.


End file.
